Nanoparticles

Researchers at the Institute of Photonic Sciences (ICFO) have developed a lab-on-a-chip device that can detect protein cancer markers in a drop of blood, working as a very early cancer-detection system. The device can detect very low concentrations of markers and is reliable, cheap and portable, making it attractive for deployment in remote areas of the world. Read More

What if you could 3D print small devices that mimicked some of the functions of human organs, to address specific issues? That's what scientists at the University of California, San Diego have done by 3D-printing a liver-like device that's claimed capable of safely detoxifying blood. Read More

Taking inspiration from the defense mechanism of the bombardier beetle, researchers at ETH Zurich have developed a film that, when damaged, instantly releases a hot foam to discourage malicious actions. The technology could be used as a simple, yet elegant and reliable way of discouraging theft and vandalism on ATM machines. Read More

Carl Sagan once said, “We are made of starstuff.” Unfortunately, he was a bit vague about what this starstuff actually is. To help answer that question, scientists at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California have developed a way of recreating the dust and gas found around dying red giant stars that eventually become planet-forming interstellar dust. Read More

In recent years, we've heard about bacteria-killing food packaging materials that incorporate sorbic acid, silver, and montmorillonite clay. One of the latest such developments along those lines is a film that protects meat from spoilage using essential oils or nanoparticles. Additionally, because the film is edible, it could even be incorporated right into meat products. Read More

I've been waiting for some time now to write a headline along the lines of "scientists discover thing that graphene is not amazing at" ... and here it is. Everybody’s favorite nanomaterial may have a plethora of near-magical properties, but as it turns out, it could also be bad for the environment – and bad for you, too. Read More

When most people think of counterfeit goods, they probably picture things like handbags or watches. In fact, there's also a huge market for knock-off high-end food products, such as extra-virgin olive oil. Scientists from Switzerland's ETH Zurich research group, however, have come up with a possible method of thwarting the makers of that bogus oil – just add synthetic DNA particles to the real thing. And yes, consumers would proceed to swallow those particles. Read More

In the ongoing quest to develop better ways of sealing wounds within the body, scientists have created surgical adhesives inspired by porcupine quills, mussels and slugs. Not all good ideas have to come from the animal kingdom, however. Recently, French researchers have had success in repairing internal organs using an adhesive solution that incorporates either silica or iron oxide nanoparticles. Read More

Delivering drugs that can knock out tumor cells within the body, without causing adverse side effects, is a tricky busines. It's why scientists have taken to engineering new and creative types of nanoparticles that do the job. Increasing a nanoparticle's ability to carry more drugs expands treatment options, but creating nanoparticles capable of delivering more than one or two drugs has proven difficult – until now. Scientists at MIT report creating a revolutionary building block technique that's enabled them to load a nanoparticle with three drugs.
The approach, they say, could be expanded to allow a nanoparticle to carry hundreds more. Read More

It may be a little late for April Fool’s, but your skepticism is nonetheless warranted when reading that researchers have shown nanoparticles to disobey a fundamental law of physics which dictates the flow of entropy and heat in, it was believed, any situation. Specifically, researchers from three universities theoretically proposed then demonstrated that a nanoparticle in a state of thermal non-equilibrium does not always behave as larger particles might under the same conditions, with implications for various fields of research. Read More